DECISION
In the legal dispute
xxx,
Applicant,
Legal Representative: Attorney Sven Adam,
Lange Geismarstraße 55, 37073 Göttingen,
against
xxx,
Respondent,
The 12th Chamber of the Social Court of Kassel decided on April 30, 2015, through its presiding judge, Judge xxx of the Social Court:
The respondent must reimburse the applicant for the costs of the application proceedings.
SE
REASONS
The applicant's admissible request to order the respondent to bear the costs of the application proceedings within the framework of the interim injunction requested by the applicant on 14 August 2013 is well-founded.
Pursuant to Section 193 Paragraph 1 Sentence 2 of the Social Courts Act (SGG), the court must, upon application, decide by order whether and to what extent the parties are to reimburse each other's costs if the court proceedings end other than by judgment or order. This requirement is met here. In principle, the same applies in preliminary injunction proceedings where the decision is made by order and the matter is concluded, as here, by a declaration of settlement.
The Social Court Act (SGG) does not specify the criteria for such a cost decision. However, according to prevailing opinion, it must be made at the court's discretion, taking into account the facts and circumstances of the case at the time of its conclusion. This legal opinion is based on the principles governing cost decisions in the Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO). According to these principles, the prospects of success at the time of the conclusion are the primary factor. If the assessment of the prospects of success reveals that one party has partially prevailed, a proportionate apportionment of costs may be possible. Finally, the principle of Section 93 of the ZPO must also be considered. According to this section, the defendant or respondent is not liable for costs if they did not give cause for the lawsuit and immediately acknowledge the claim after filing the lawsuit. This provision requires consideration of the defendant's or respondent's conduct both before and during the proceedings. A general principle emerges from all these regulations: the party who wrongfully caused the costs should bear them. The principle of causation or causation is therefore the prevailing principle in cost law. The question of the prospects of success is essentially only a question of who wrongfully caused the other party's expenses. The party that would presumably have lost the case wrongfully burdened the opposing party with costs and must therefore reimburse them. The dispute as to whether Section 93 of the Code of Civil Procedure is directly applicable or only applicable in principle in social court proceedings is irrelevant in this respect (cf. Schleswig-Holstein Higher Social Court, decision of February 13, 1997, L-2/Sb-8/97 in Breithaupt 1997, pp. 576 et seq.).
Taking these requirements into account, the applicant's request is justified to the extent decided.
In this respect, the respondent's statements in the written submission of August 19, 2014, which subsequently led to the applicant's declaration of settlement, are ultimately to be interpreted as an acknowledgment of the applicant's claim, asserted in the preliminary injunction proceedings, for benefits under the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act (AsylbLG) without the reduction pursuant to Section 1a. Consequently, and in light of the further explanations above, the respondent is obligated to bear the applicant's extrajudicial costs in the present application proceedings, since the applicant sufficiently demonstrated both a corresponding claim and grounds for an injunction when submitting his application for preliminary legal protection. In this context, the 11th Chamber of the Kassel Social Court (decision of October 22, 2014, S 11 AY 8/14 ER) held that it is irrelevant that the respondent believes the Federal Constitutional Court's decision regarding the amount of benefits under the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act (AsylbLG) alone does not establish the unconstitutionality of Section 1a of the AsylbLG. In any event, the respondent himself, based on the duration of the reduction under Section 1a of the AsylbLG in the applicant's case, no longer considers the reduction lawful and acknowledges the applicant's corresponding claim in the application proceedings. The respondent thus follows a decision on appeal by the Hessian State Social Court of December 18, 2013 (L 4 AY 16/13 BER). In light of this decision, the adjudicating chamber finds it incomprehensible why the respondent initially intends to refer the applicant to the objection procedure and considers the application for preliminary relief superfluous. However, insofar as the safeguarding of the constitutionally guaranteed minimum subsistence level of a benefit recipient is at stake within the context of the application of Section 1a of the Asylum Seekers' Benefits Act (AsylbLG), and the request for preliminary legal protection prompts the respondent to immediately grant full benefits, then, in such circumstances, it is justified, as the 11th Chamber of the court (as before) also believes, to order the respondent to bear the applicant's extrajudicial costs, i.e., the costs of the applicant's legal representative. Forcing an applicant in such a situation to wait for the objection procedure (especially with an uncertain outcome) is unreasonable, at least with regard to benefits that secure their basic needs.
The appeal against this decision is excluded (§ 172 para. 3 SGG).
